


A Dream in the Green

by likethenight



Series: Writers' Month 2020 [24]
Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Healing, Nature, Nature Magic, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: Tortured, gravely injured, barely alive, Gawain dreams. And the earth takes him back to herself, to heal.Ficlet written for Writers' Month 2020, day 27, prompt "dream".
Series: Writers' Month 2020 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867720
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	A Dream in the Green

**Author's Note:**

> Gawain has been my absolute favourite of Arthur's knights since I was about eight or nine and read the story of Gawain and Ragnell in Roger Lancelyn Greene's 'Tales of King Arthur' (this is...a very long time ago). I tend to judge retellings of the stories on how they portray Gawain, and I really REALLY loved what they did with him in Cursed. So this is my take on what happened in episode 10 (contains SPOILERS for that episode!), in which he truly grows into his name.

Gawain dreams. He barely feels the pain any more, barely hears Nimue’s screams, her desperate bargaining with the voices of the Hidden, barely feels the tendrils of her power slithering around him. He barely feels it when she falls beside him, exhausted. 

The Paladins take Nimue away, and silence falls. Gawain is alone. Only…no, he has never been alone. Always the grass and the earth and the trees have been with him, and they are with him still. The grass rises, the leaves and the vines and the roots, and they take him into their embrace, cradling him as they draw him down, down, down, into the earth.

The soldiers break camp and the world moves on; the field returns to nature and the grasses grow again, covering the campfires and the post-holes. No one would ever know what has happened here.

And Gawain dreams. Safe in the earth’s embrace he dreams of freedom, of life, of the birds in the sky and the animals in the forest. The pain fades and his wounds heal, tended by the herbs and healing plants that grow around him, spreading themselves across his skin. He was ever a child of the earth, and she has taken him back to herself to heal.

And when he is ready, she eases him back to the surface, still wrapped in the grasses and leaves, the vines and the roots, and a soft voice whispers to him to awaken.

His eyes open and he is lying in the grass, the warm sun shining down upon him, a soft breeze blowing, and for a moment he feels utterly happy, completely at peace. But he is changed, and he does not yet know it.

His people called him the Green Knight before, for the armour he wore, for the way he could blend into the forest. But now, what is left of them will call him the Green Knight for more than that. They will name him for the vines upon his skin, the leaves that grow in his hair, his eyes now green as the grass upon which he lies. Child of earth he was and is, son of the green, knight of the Fey. Gawain has truly earned his name at last.


End file.
